NonLinear Thoughts
by La Fuego
Summary: Just because you aren't in a relationship together, doesn't mean that person can't make you unhappy. Supposed Dream Pair, implied TezuFuji if you squint hard enough, onesided Golden Pair.


**Genre:** Romance, Fluff  
**Beta:** chilibreath  
**Pairing:** Supposed DP, implied TezuFuji, one-sided GP  
**Disclaimers: **I play with the PoT boys every once in a while but they aren't mine so at the end of the day, I give them back to Konomi-sensei  
**Summary: **"Just because you aren't in a relationship together doesn't mean that person can't make you unhappy..."  
**Author's Notes (part 1): **I firmly believe that poetry should be read using one's voice-- even if it is only to mutter it under your breath, you need to hear the rhythm and the rhyme of the words.

**Dedication:** For **pinksnow1986** and **sugarcakey**. I hope you enjoy your gift, you guys!  
**Acknowledgements:** My itoshii for helping my Eiji find his words, **pinksnow1986** for showing us that Eiji is indeed capable of intelligent thought, and **andersenmom** for pointing out that "Eiji isn't dumb, he just isn't capable of expressing his thoughts in a linear fashion."

**Non-Linear Thoughts on Heartbreak and Non-Relationships**

_A smile is pain's best friend  
__smile when you feel like screaming  
__smile when you feel like howling_

_A smile is sorrow's best friend  
__smile when you feel like crying  
__smile when you feel like dying_

_A smile is my best friend  
__I smile  
__whenever I'm with you_

_-Smile_

* * *

There is something about being seen as the perennially cheerful, happy-go-lucky character in a group. For some reason that he can't really blame on others, people will always assume that being able to smile despite his tears is a given. That bouncing back from any disappointment is a natural gift he was born with. That there is nothing in this world that can hold him down for very long. 

Case in point: one Kikumaru Eiji. Third year junior high student, Seigaku tennis club regular member, borderline ADHD person, habitual personal space invader, unofficial team mascot, and everyone's personal cheerleader. The latest gossip making the rounds in school claims that he secretly harbors frustrated hopes of joining the school's drama club.

For the most part, he takes it all in stride. Being one of the more personable and flashier players on the team, having all sorts of weird rumors circulating about him has become a matter of course. So far this school year, he's had the natural color of his hair, his speech pattern, his IQ level, his relationship with his doubles partner, and most recently, his real school club preference put under the scrutiny of the microcosmic society known as Junior High School.

And each time a rumor about him finally reaches his ears, his reaction has almost always been the same: the whole range of his emotions would flash through his face, one after another. First would come surprise (or shock, as was the case with that rumor regarding Oishi), and then disbelief, which would quickly snowball into anger, that would then dissolve into dazed incredulity, and finally, helpless amusement.

…Actually, having thought about it, Eiji is thinking he could understand where that rumor about the drama club is coming from.

* * *

Kikumaru Eiji is a very social creature by nature. Being in the middle of things is the most natural setting for him. After all, he does come from a big family, and being the youngest, he has come to accept (and even expect) the doting attention that people around him tend to shower him with. He comes alive whenever he is surrounded by people. He becomes this almost inexhaustible bundle of energy that cannot, for the life of him, stay still. 

But there are moments when he can, and does, become still. It is in these moments that he tries to make sense of his thoughts that are as varied and as lively as he is. Trying to organize them into any semblance of sequential order has always been a bit of a challenge. Luckily for him, the people he communicates with on a regular basis are so used to the way his mind works that connecting the dots when he tries to make his point is a given. And for those times when Eiji is having a particularly tough time trying to express his thoughts in a linear fashion, Oishi is always on hand and willing to translate for his doubles partner.

At present, Eiji is huddled in a corner of the tennis court. He is as still as nobody has seen him before. Waiting for the morning practices to get started, he had a thin, green filler notebook open on his lap, a pen absently tapping his lips, a thoughtful frown on his face, and a faraway look in his eyes…

What comes as a surprise to most people is that when Kikumaru Eiji needs to hash out his own thoughts with himself, he writes them down as poetry. And indeed, it is just like his personality to do so. His poetry is abstract enough to still confuse the unwary, but clear enough for his own abstract, non-linear mind to grasp.

With his pen poised to write over his filler, he looked over briefly to the other end of the tennis courts where the familiar lithe figure of the team's tennis prodigy stood conversing with Kawamura, the early morning sunlight picking out golden brown highlights in the tensai's hair. Eiji gave a slight smile before looking down once again on the clean page before him. He tried to clear his mind of all thoughts but that which has been distracting him of late.

In his mind's eye, he saw clear, shining, blue eyes. A slight smile that held more secrets than Da Vinci's Mona Lisa. A soothing, melodious voice floated in the air and sang to him like music that only he could hear. Snippets of conversations came to him as echoes. A soothing touch. A whispered word. Moments of basked in silence and togetherness. A firm hand holding his own in silent support. A sweet smile directed at someone else…

Gasping as he came out of inside his own head, Eiji once again felt that mild surprise that he often experienced when he looked at the page before him that was no longer blank.

_fan the flames in my heart  
__unwittingly though it may be;  
__justify my hidden passion  
__in a fleeting smile directed at me_

_sing that song of friendship,  
__yet let me hear a different tune  
__under hypnotic love notes, I dream  
__until it ends too soon;  
__still my secret remains with me  
__unwilling to meet my voice  
__knowing no words to say to you,  
__eloquence in silence is my choice_

_-Love Veiled in Friendship_

Very few people have ever seen Eiji during his periods of "stillness". And even then, they would only see a very brief glimpse of it before Eiji's mask of exuberance slides back firmly into place. For a person who tends to go blurting out the first thing that comes to his mind without the benefit of an internal editor, he is pretty good at hiding the things that do matter—the things he personally holds to be sacred.

* * *

The bell signaling the end of the morning classes rang fifteen minutes ago and the usual lunch break pandemonium was in full swing. There was the crazy traffic of students going to and coming from the school cafeteria. There were several clumps of chatting students littering the hallway, making sure that the traffic would be as bad as it could get. Friends who didn't belong to the same class, and who refused to brave the mad traffic to close the distance between them, opted to shout their plans to meet after classes to each other. 

Amid this frenzied flurry of activity and cacophony of sounds, Fuji spied a familiar red-haired figure by one of the many windows lining the hallway, forearms resting on the windowsill, absently gazing out to an unspecified point in the distance.

Fuji was making his way towards his friend when he overheard the conversation of a couple of giggling girls huddled together a few feet away from where Eiji was.

"I'm telling you, the only reason he's even still in this school is because he can play tennis well. Academically speaking, I don't think he's got what it takes to meet Seigaku's standards."

"Yeah, I can sort of tell from that blank expression. Look at him!"

Fuji stopped dead in his tracks right beside the two girls. He suppressed the desire to roll his eyes; he thought that rumor about Eiji having a below-average IQ was over and done with. He was not, however, able to suppress the razor-sharp glare of death that he sent their way.

With a disdainful smirk and a chillingly cold voice, he corrected their misconceptions. "Kikumaru Eiji is not an idiot. He may have a rather unconventional view of things, but that doesn't make him stupid. In fact, it takes a certain amount of intelligence and imagination to actually think at the same level as he does." A pause, and this time, Fuji gave the two girls one of his patented close-eyed smiles, "But I doubt that you, with the air-filled cotton you have between your ears that you try to pass off as brains, would understand that."

* * *

Without saying a word, Fuji sidled up to Eiji and imitated his pose. 

Eiji spared him a sideways glance and went back to staring at his unspecified point in the distance. "Did something happen, nya?"

The blue-eyed tensai smiled at his friend's astute perception. "No, nothing happened," he denied.

Eiji sighed and turned around so that he had his back to window and his elbows rested on the windowsill. "Maa, you have that same look on your face that you always have when you hear rumors about me." Eiji looked up to the ceiling and asked in a resigned voice, "Nya, what is it this time? It's not still about my hair, is it? Because I'm telling you, Fujiko, I am sorely tempted to do what Hatsuharu did in Furuba to prove that his hair was naturally that color!"

Fuji couldn't help the laugh that escaped him. "You'll seriously drag some random person to the washroom and show him or her… er… _stuff_ just to prove that you're a natural red head?"

Eiji made a face and stuck out his tongue at no one in particular. "Mou, I wouldn't want to be accused of sexually assaulting anyone, nya."

Fuji chuckled but didn't say anything to that.

A few seconds of comfortable silence passed between them. Or at least, as close to silence as they could get, considering the absurd amount of activity and noise generated by the rest of the student populace.

"… Ne, Fuji, how do you get a broken heart?"

If Fuji had been conversing with anybody other than Eiji, that little bit of randomness would have thrown him off. But this _was_ Eiji – and while he was far from being the airhead some people took him for, expressing his thoughts in a linear fashion has never been one of the acrobatic player's strongest suits.

Fuji shifted his stance and cocked his head a little to the side as he considered both Eiji and the question he had asked. The blue-eyed tensai noted that Eiji had the same faraway look on his face that he had a while ago, when he was looking out the window. So this is what he'd thinking about.

"Broken heart?" Fuji tentatively put forth, "Of the romantic kind?"

A hesitant nod from Eiji was the answer.

"Saa, who knows…?" Fuji answered slowly… thoughtfully. "The heart is such a complicated entity, don't you think? Any number of things could make it beat, in the same way that any number of things could make it break…"

A bit of a commotion at one end of the corridor made Fuji break off in the middle of what he was saying to curiously glance at what was causing it. The sudden frantic whispers, the rushed primping and smoothing of hair, and the audible, dreamy sighs given out by the female populace made sense to the tennis prodigy when he saw Tezuka Kunimitsu emerging from the stairs and turning towards his own classroom, studiously pretending not to notice the girls silently, albeit obviously, vying for his attention.

After a few more seconds of staring at the doorway Tezuka had just disappeared into, Fuji turned back to look at his friend. "Sometimes, the most painful heartbreak you could experience is being in a relationship and then living in constant fear that you'd wake up one day and find that all the things that once made you happy have been taken away from you, that you never had your partner's love after all—that it was all just wishful thinking on your part. Living everyday of your life with that dread and uncertainty as your constant companion…" At this point, Fuji cut himself off and regained the placid smile he is best known for.

* * *

The slight frown marring Eiji's usually smooth forehead and the little pout on his lips were all positive indication that he was still mulling over his lunchtime conversation with Fuji. Although the tennis tensai did manage to clearly state his take on heartbreak, something about what was said did not sit all that well with Eiji. 

So getting your heart broken really had to involve formal relationships? So the only way you get a broken heart is if you break up with your significant other or something like that?

Eiji risked a sideways glance towards Fuji.

But what if you never really talked about it? What if you feel hurt whenever you see the person you love laughing with somebody else? What if you feel a little lump in your throat whenever you see the person you love looking up with shining eyes at another person? What if you feel a slight burn beneath your eyelids whenever the person you love walks away with someone else?

What is that feeling, then? Isn't that heartbreak? Isn't that the agonizing feeling that thousands of writers and poets have tried to dissect before?

Eiji stole another look at the boy with the golden brown hair.

A thought came to him and Eiji hurriedly grabbed his little green filler notebook. He jotted down two lonely lines. He quietly read them back, and although his frown eased a little, a trace of confusion and discontent lingered on.

* * *

"Oi, Eiji!" Oishi called out to his doubles partner before jogging and catching up to the red head just as the latter was about to exit the school gate. "Are you okay? You seem pretty out of it… and you weren't quite into the practices this afternoon either. Is everything fine?" 

For a moment, Eiji was tempted to lie and say that everything was fine. He even had his reassuring words ready. But the second he turned to face Oishi and saw the earnest look on his friend's face, the words died in his throat.

What the heck… it's a long walk home and it'll be a while yet before they reached the intersection where they needed to go their separate ways. Eiji looked uncertainly at his feet as he walked and then softly, he asked the sensible team vice-captain, "Nya, Oishi, have you ever had your heart broken?"

The question certainly caught Oishi off-guard. It was enough of a surprise that he actually stopped walking altogether and stood rooted to the spot. Oishi spent a few seconds goggling at Eiji, his mouth opening and closing but no words would come out.

Eiji walked on a few more steps before he noticed that nobody was walking beside him anymore. Stopping to look behind him, the acrobatic player took in Oishi's flummoxed expression. Eiji gave a sheepish smile, discreetly kicked at a small stone lying by his feet, and self-consciously tugged at his hair. "Nya, it was a stupidly random question, wasn't it?" An embarrassed chuckle was quickly followed by, "Never mind. Forget I asked," and with that, the other half of the golden pair turned on his heel and went on walking as if nothing happened.

Realization finally dawned on Oishi as he watched Eiji's back. So it was a love problem that was weighing down the bouncy red head, was it? Oishi had to wonder at that… who in the world could possibly _not_ love Kikumaru Eiji?

"I have!" Oishi loudly blurted out and started running to catch up with his friend.

Eiji arched a questioning brow as he stopped and waited for his doubles partner to catch up to him.

"I have…" Oishi clarified between puffs of heavy breath when he finally reached Eiji's side, "… had my heart broken…"

Before Eiji's natural curiosity could kick in and started plying Oishi with endless questions, the level-headed vice-captain headed him off. Oishi straightened up and started walking again. "It doesn't matter who it is—" Eiji missed the longing sideways glance that was thrown in his direction because his face showed that he was still reeling from the fact that Oishi apparently has had his first heartbreak already "—but yes, I've had my heart broken before.

"But you know," Oishi continued, "even if it didn't work out, even if I was never able to tell that person about how I truly felt, even if being with that person is both happy and painful at the same time and I always seem to get my heart broken over and over again by that same person, I don't think I'd ever trade that experience for anything else in the world."

"So you didn't say anything about your feelings to this person either?" Eiji looked adorably confused. "Mou, then how could you have your heart broken if you weren't in a relationship?"

Oishi let out a silent sigh. Sometimes, being with Eiji made him feel older than he really was. "We can't help who we like, Eiji." Oishi answered quietly but firmly. "But just because you aren't in a relationship together doesn't mean that person can't make you unhappy. Love doesn't have to be reciprocated in order for it to be called love—and heart break is all about love. You don't need a formal relationship to feel that."

As soon as the last word left Oishi's mouth, he saw Eiji's face brighten. It was an expression that Oishi is overly familiar with.

"I did it again, didn't I?" he asked rather smugly. "I've managed to explain a thought of yours that you've been trying to work out on your own, haven't I?"

Instead of answering, Eiji rummaged through his bag, pulled out his green filler notebook triumphantly, ripped out a page, and then glomped Oishi.

"Nya! You are the absolute best, Oishi!" declared the red head with his usual bounce back.

Out of the corner of his eye, Eiji saw Fuji crossing the street. Eiji faced Oishi, a delighted look firmly on his features. "Thanks, Oishi!" he said as he gave the sheet of paper in his hand to Oishi. "I'll see you tomorrow!" And in the very next breath, "Oi! Fujiko! Wait for me!"

Oishi gave a slight smile as Eiji scrambled to catch up to Fuji who had stopped to wait for the acrobatic player. Eiji started talking animatedly, using his hands and his expressive facial features, as soon as he caught up with Fuji. They walked away together and Oishi watched as Fuji listened attentively to Eiji, nodding every once in a while.

Looking down at the paper in his hand, Oishi read the two lonely lines written in Eiji's bold scrawl. He knew exactly what those lines meant. He knew exactly what they felt like.

_A heart remained untouched  
__Is not a heart remained unbroken._

_**Owari**_

La Fuego 5/2007

**Author's Notes (part 2):  
**1. In case you missed it the first time around, please read back the second poem, "Love Veiled in Friendship", and pay attention to the first letter of every line. Yes, that was intentional.  
2. Everything in this fic was written by me, including the poetry pieces, except for the last two lines of the fic which was from my itoshii.  
3. Comments/reviews feed me and keep me alive.


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